Interestingly 1300 RL's have found a home in europe since Jan. That is actually quite respectable, for a Honda "luxury" car in a market where Honda is still a midget, not to mention that the brand is not considered a "luxury" brand at all, furthermore, the RL is hideously expensive in europe, thus its competing surprisingly succesfully. I'm sure that the 156mph top speed doesn't hurt either, bimmer and merc owners are probably well impressed when when one whizzes by on the left lane of the autobahn where the top dogs like to play :) It probably has earned a reputation for bruising non turbo 5 series and A6's.

It is surprising how many they have sold, although I've yet to see any in the UK. Still think it is a big shame that the car wasn't released here until almost 2 years after the US. Bring out a more sporty version to spark some interest!

6SPDTL wrote:Interestingly 1300 RL's have found a home in europe since Jan. That is actually quite respectable, for a Honda "luxury" car in a market where Honda is still a midget, not to mention that the brand is not considered a "luxury" brand at all, furthermore, the RL is hideously expensive in europe, thus its competing surprisingly succesfully. I'm sure that the 156mph top speed doesn't hurt either, bimmer and merc owners are probably well impressed when when one whizzes by on the left lane of the autobahn where the top dogs like to play :) It probably has earned a reputation for bruising non turbo 5 series and A6's.

Well, actually Honda is much more of a luxury brand in Europe than in the US, that's for sure, but it's no Mercedes, that's true.

That said, those are "first year numbers", which reflect the novelty of "a rare model" in a saturated market where every rich has the same BMW/Mercedes/Audi car. That tiny market is quickly saturated, and you can see that just after a year of being released (August06 was the second "full month"), sales are decreasing sharply.

Btw, it isn't hideously expensive, it's just priced at European prices. You pay 28K USD for an AT-TSX and 53K USD for an CMBS-RL, we pay 32K euro for an AT-2.4L Accord and 56K euro for a CMBS-Legend (no cheap versions over here).

All true, still surprising nontheless. As 94sir noted, however, if honda saw it fitting to release a performance version those number might actually go up. The RL is a fine car, even now if Honda came out with an M type version, they could save the car from ignomy and could actually save money by extending its life cycle by a couple of years. A 400hp SHAWD with a more sporting supension and steering would bring in buyers by droves. The velopment of such a version would cost peanuts compared to a whole new redesign (which is not needed) since the suspension parts (aspec) already exist, slapping a turbo on the J35 and fortifying the tranny is all that would be required, developmental costs would be in the low millions instead of the hundreds of millions of designing a totally new vehicle! And as we all know, for every hot version sold 4 or 5 of the plain vanilla RLs would follow.